after my wife returned from China, and told me about the red air, it seems like a possibility now.

In another forum someone posted some photos of air and water pollution. It's no surprise (or shouldn't be to anyone) about the water pollution in the lake behind the Three Gorges Dam, which means effectively the who river downstream suffers the same ills. Skyrocketing rates of esophageal cancer in China have made me eliminate any further purchase of food which has been grown or processed in China. As goes the air and water, so goes the crop.

I've maintained for years that China, Mexico, and similar countries going though industrial booms are simply in early stages of industrial revolution. Next we shall see environmental, wage, and health reforms, as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Issue is that just because start of the road is the same for them, assuming that they will end up at the same goal is quite strange. East Asian countries have a very different culture, with very different approach to even most basic of things. Expecting them to end up at the same goal is rather ignorant to say the least.

I spent a few weeks in China with an anthropologist friend. We'd go to National Parks and preserves and such, only to find that someone had built a roller coaster or slide or some other tourist attraction in them. My friend explained that the Chinese culture doesn't have a particular appreciation for nature in its raw state; that rather than seeing "pristineness" as a virtue in itself, the Chinese kind of see it as a null state, such that a pristine area can always be improved by adding something to it.

Then again, other than freaks like Thoreau, most Americans weren't out hugging trees at the beginning of our Industrial Revolution either.

Bingo. This idea that "asian culture" is so different from "western culture" is just intellectually lazy. Sure there are differences, but fundamentally people are people, they all want the same stuff - food, air, water, sex, sleep, security, health, family, respect, creativity, etc.

The sort of reforms we saw that came in on the western industrial revolution aren't culturally specific, they are human-specific. The implementations will surely vary along with the timelines, but the end result will be the same because if it does not get to a similar point of satisifying universal human needs, it will collapse because the humans won't tolerate it indefinitely.

And take it from somebody living in Shanghai at the moment. A woman was run over by a taxi driver because nobody respects the traffic lights for people on foot. Do you think the cars stopped when they saw her motionless body on the street? They just started to drive around it.

Do you understand that that sort of callusness was not uncommon in the US during the industrial revolution? Don't make the mistake of assuming that being on different places on a developmental timeline means that they are headed in a different direction.

And take it from somebody living in Shanghai at the moment. A woman was run over by a taxi driver because nobody respects the traffic lights for people on foot. Do you think the cars stopped when they saw her motionless body on the street? They just started to drive around it. So we have extreme different perceptions of the value of human life.

I saw the same kind of story in the US news at some point in the past year. The greater the concentration of people, the less the average person cares about another average person. Just another face/body in the crowd.

Let me give you a couple of examples of cultural difference between China and Western Europe.

So what? Look, I don't even know how much of what you wrote is pure stereotyping or something more accurate. But it does not matter in the context of this discussion. None of those 'examples' are relevant to the discussion, at best they show a slightly different balancing of basic human needs from one culture to another. But in no way do they even suggest that any of those needs are negated in certain cultures.

Let me give you a few more then, at which point you will perhaps stop being obtuse.

1. Chinese value saving money for future and living frugally. US residents value borrowing money to reach higher level of life.This alone should clue you in to the massive difference of potential outcomes of any financial scenario, to the point of having polar opposite outcome.

2. Chinese do not value individual life but they value groups, clans and family ties. US residents value individuality to a far greater degree.This cau

1. Chinese value saving money for future and living frugally. US residents value borrowing money to reach higher level of life.

You seem ignorant to the fact that this over-borrowing in US culture is new in the last 35 years or so. Certainly was not the case during tthe industrial revolution. And I still don't see what that has to do with legislative fixes to problems brought on by the industrial revolution.

2. Chinese do not value individual life but they value groups, clans and family ties. US residents value individuality to a far greater degree.

So what does that have to do with laws like cleaning up the environment, food quality laws, and labor laws like safe working conditions?

Let me give you a few more then, at which point you will perhaps stop being obtuse.

No, I am afraid it is you who is being obtuse. You are so convinced of the correctness of

1. Not "overborrowing" but "borrowing". In general. Chinese SAVE money. They do not spend it until they have some saved for a bad day, a bad month, even a bad year. And then they won't spend until they have earned enough to purchase the product without any debt involved. It's a huge problem for China because they cannot get local consumption going because of this culture to amounts anywhere close to that of the West.

2. These laws are not seen as important even when they are enacted. Locals simply do not car

1. Not "overborrowing" but "borrowing". In general. Chinese SAVE money.

Still not applicable to the topic at hand.

2. These laws are not seen as important even when they are enacted. Locals simply do not care for them.

Ah, now at least you have a relevant point. I disagree though. I'd say that sort of problem goes away as the general population becomes more educated. When everybody is a starving, illiterate peasant then there isn't much ability to take a larger view. Fortunately, most of the people affected are no longer starving and education has become exceptionally important in China over the last decade+. Even if it is more of a technical nature than most western educatio

Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong are all East Asian nations (or special administrative areas) which are to varying degrees culturally similar to China and provide good examples of this. South Korea and Taiwan are particularly dramatic examples of moving from autocratic to democratic government. Although it is not in East Asia, you could also add Singapore and Malaysia to this list. Singapore interestingly still has an autocratic government, while (less developed) Malaysia is in a kind of transitional phase towards proper democracy. They all have cleaned up their environment a lot as citizen awareness and sensitivity towards environmental problems has increased.

Then they'll just have to find some third world country to offload their pollution to. Maybe the government of North Korea could be convinced to let them open factories there in exchange for whatever riches the Chinese can dump on the Kim family.

The thing is that it isn't that expensive in the west. The problem is the rich insisting that they have a right to get richer at an increasing rate. If the wealth was spread out a bit better, everyone could have a not bad job and the rich would still be quite rich.

Ya, but it seems, the states & Europe got the best of the globe's tolerance for pollution, I don't think we can expect the same weather if every single country in the world goes through an "industrial revolution" adding to the accumulating pollution.

as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Seems to me that it was realized a long time ago. Then people realized that they could setup the system to reward shortsightedness, and could cash out before the consequences of their actions happened. Witness most of the financial industry. China seems to have already skipped over the step of making happy, productive workers and went right to the "bleed it dry immediately" model.

I've maintained for years that China, Mexico, and similar countries going though industrial booms are simply in early stages of industrial revolution. Next we shall see environmental, wage, and health reforms, as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Actually, they are in the LATE stages of the industrial revolution (as any casual use of Google Earth would reveal). They are entering that state where increased disposable income and increased levels of education cause individual citizens making purchasing choices that drive the economy in a direction of more open-ness, more freedom, and more environmental responsibility. These people enter government and start working toward taking care of the environment.

Progress is slow, but this is exactly the predicted pattern that has been seen all over the world as prosperity and education increase, people start taking better care of their environment, investments, and themselves. Much of the west went thru this in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You rarely hear of smog alerts in the US any more. They used to be common and long lasting in the past. You actually see clear skylines over most cities these days. Hell, even the Hudson river is recovering.

You overlooked their attempt on June 4, 1989, which resulted in the Tiananmen Massacre. People were disappeared and history revised to disappear any memory of the conscious choice of the country to choose individual freedom - instead of just being content with letting multinationals keep their workers occupied while giving the people a few economic distractions.

A few trinkets wont change the general lack of freedom that the People's Republic of China maintains. The country's face will have to be ripped cl

No I did not overlook Tiananmen, which happened 23 years ago, the same year as the Exxon Valdez disaster, and the US invasion of Panama.

This is not a political issue, it is an economic issue.

My point is that it is simply ridiculous to state that China is just now entering the industrial revolution, when the truth is that China is in the later stages of that revolution, and is quietly entering a social revolution, which is being allowed to happen by the (nominally) communist government.

I've maintained for years that China, Mexico, and similar countries going though industrial booms are simply in early stages of industrial revolution. Next we shall see environmental, wage, and health reforms, as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Slight difference between how Europe when through its industrial revolution - most of what was in the air came from coal burning. Bad, but nothing like substances which modern manufacturing pumps out into air and water.

The US had its adventures with air and water pollution, sometimes in the name of Victory or progress, but finally coming to grips with it in the 1960s (Pogo sez: We have met the enemy and he is us.) EPA cleanup is still going on, with billions spent to clean up after defunct factories and s

By that time we'll see right-wing histerical about the Chinese ruining their economy with wussy labour and environmental regulations. Where are the poor bastards going to outsource to, to maximise their already hugely bloated profits? Mars?

There can't be hypocrisy unless those commenting or criticizing the Chinese government were directly involved in the US government's cover-up back in the 50s and 60s. Unless we go down the path where we regard every Briton who comments on African genocide as hypocrites, every Ghanan who comments on slavery as hypocrites, every Ukrainian who comments on Fukushima as hypocrites.

I grew up a few miles from there in the 80s. It was awesome hearing/feeling the rocket engine tests. I don't think there has been any correlation between higher cancer rates and the communities around that facility, so I'm not sure what that has to do with the story. Progress requires some sacrifice. If we aren't wiling to sacrifice anything we will never progress. The trick is finding the right balance and personally I feel we have swayed too far into the unwilling to sacrifice territory of the last few de

The problem isn't mismanagement. It's lack of management. Industrial oversight is not intuitive to new industrial booms, because the short term profit will always outweigh the long term unseen consequences until they come to light.

I realize you're trying to be tolerant of a different country, but being accommodating to corruption and lack of management is not the moral kind of tolerance. China has been booming for over 30 years, and people have an expectation for a certain quality of life, yet instead of supporting them we see excuses. Imagine Slashdot Europeans reading about inferior labor protections in the US and waiving it off, or even telling other Europeans they should not say anything about the US because of their own countrie

No, you're wrong. In China it's not the lack of management it's corruption. Corruption so rampant that if you have enough money, anything can happen, and as long as not too many people are killed even the central planners in Beijing will look the other way as long as everyone gets their cut and someone else can take the fall, and you continue to pump money in.

People like to decry the corruption in the west here, it's got nothing on China. It's the way you do business there, or you won't do business.

First is a search for two common ways of writing "corrupt official", limited to sites which have forums (filters out official news so you can actually see what people's opinions are). Second is a search for "corruption" also limited to forums. Del

Industrial oversight is not intuitive to new industrial booms, because the short term profit will always outweigh the long term unseen consequences until they come to light.

Unseen consequences? If this was still the 1800's and science was less advanced it would be excusable, but this is the 21st century and the effects of the industrial revolutions of the U.S. and Europe and the environmental problems they caused are known history now. Did China think that if they took a similar path they would magically be exempt from the same problems? No, they knew what would happen. The Party simply chose to ignore it to see how far they could raise themselves before they started killing o

You can't see clean air from space - it is clear. You can see heavily polluted air, though. The idea is that there are so many pollutants that the effect is visible on a large scale - you can see where it is heavier and where it is lighter (or completely not present, though I suspect little of China's populated area has truly clean air).

True, but I usually take the "from space" figure of speech to be visible from low earth orbit with 20/20 unassisted human vision. Yes I am aware that low earth orbit is a grey area, and not 100% entirely "outer space".

We are feathering [cnn.com] our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.

At some point this evacuation of our industrial base to China will emerge as a moral issue. It's already an employment issue for the working class and a fiscal issue for the nation, but neither of those seem to comfortable office people and the ruling class.

Maybe the shame of all this will.

Importing from regimes that do not have equivalent regulatory rigor is exploitation.

Sure it's exploitation. Given that there is no way to practice inter-nation commerce with a nation that does NOT have identical environmental, wage, and human rights policies, the only alternative is to seal our borders and live without the benefits of global economies. You know, things like foreign oil, electronics, rare minerals, and imported EVERYTHING.

There are many nations that are close enough. There's no need to seal our borders, just avoid the worst offenders, in particular the ones that have at some point introduced poison into the food supply.

That's moronic. There's no way short of bypassing another country's sovereignty to inspect and enforce our laws on foreign based businesses. It's impossible to inspect them from afar with any degree of assurance. WMD's in Iraq, for example.

We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.

Submitter here, this link [slashdot.org] was removed from my submission. To be fair it was a link heavy submission so it was probably smart. Obviously we're on the same planet as China and when this negatively affects the planet it also affects us.

So you already have an interest in not purchasing materials from heavily polluting companies. The problem is that the "free market" as it exists (yeah, I know it's not truly a free market) does not give a single fuck about the environment. We don't even have a way of ra

...which also doesn't work. I think people just aren't designed to grasp a community as big as the one we have. When you live in a village, you see the consequences of your actions, so you avoid shitting in the pond. Today, we have no idea where our shit comes from and who's dying in the manufacturing process. It's not just that there's no available time in our lives to inspect what we buy (both because we buy too much crap and because our time is limited and information simply isn't readily available). We

12 years sounds about right. Buy N Large [wikia.com] estimated 5 years to clean up the whole planet with an army of underpaid worker drones. Remember, "Today is the 700th anniversary of our five-year cruise. Ask for your free Septuacentennial Cupcake in a Cup!" So the underestimated it by a bit, but that was a whole planet. Twelve years should be enough time for China to clean up one country with an army of underpaid worker drones.

Because I just can't resist feeding trolls, a free market is dependent on property rights. In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court [probeinternational.org], and in fact government protection of polluters [ssrn.com] has been a consistent feature in wide-scale environmental problems.

I'm curious, what makes you qualify me as a troll? Is it because i indicated i hold an opinion that disagrees with yours? Or is it because i stated my opinion in the form of a joke, rather than using highfalutin phraseology like "I believe situations like this support my hypothesis that a central government body with regulatory power over corporations is necessary for the continued well-being of the general populace, and furthermore... [etc, etc]"?

Actually, what my phrasing assumed was that supporters of free market systems are quick to jump in with comments on stories showing the fallacies of governments and/or regulations, but tend to remain quiet until prompted on stories showing fallacies of corporations harming the average person, so i figured i'd get the ball rolling. Perhaps your interpretation of the phrasing was different, but that's another matter.

I interpreted your phrasing as snide rather than joking. As a reply to this comment itself, an honest supporter of free markets will note that the very existence of corporations is a government intervention in the market.

The case of pollution is an excellent example of the utilitarian rationale behind a market economy, which mostly boils down to the agency problem: The EPA (meaning, of course, the individuals employed there) doesn't have much direct incentive to prevent pollution, and people are always mor

What happens when the offender is a homeless bum? And the plaintiff is a not-for-profit daycare for crack mothers who are trying to get on their feet, which now has to close down? Then the crack mothers go prostituting, leaving their kids in another junkies hands to pass on all wisdom... then what? Is that the free market? One big cascade of failure you spend your life hoping it doesn't affect you? I don't want it then.

This reply is so full of evidence-free Marxist cant that I'm not going to fisk it, but (a) I already provided a number of examples where "the poor" prevailed over "the rich" in such cases, and (b) the discussion isn't between private legal action and perfection, it's between private legal action and action taken at the discretion of a government agency who has no skin in the game and who is predictably coopted by your oligarchs [wikipedia.org].

You picked a conveniently large and heterogeneous sample, but let's say you intended to discuss industrial centers toward the end of the century.

My reply is that once again you're comparing situations you don't like to an unrealistic ideal; in this case, a society with modern technology to that in the 1880s. The fair comparison is to the other options in the 1880s, and while reducing options to a scalar value is subjective in the extreme, perhaps the closest we can get is to observe that for all of the dow

OK, brief review of Wiki article on the SCOTUS case you cite -- abuse of the Commerce Clause. Now you too are engaging in a "perfect vs. good" kind of argument. I was thinking of FDR's attempt to pack the court, and the striking down of, IIRC, the National Recovery Act and perhaps some other New Deal programs.

Perfection? No; but we didn't end up with One Party, FDR as the chairman, a cult of personality, a packed court, etc.

So who do the people in the big cities in China sue over the air pollution? All of the hundreds or thousands of companies and all of the millions of people who are collectively responsible for the problem? Do you really think that's a viable solution?

Mu. Your question is nonsensical because China doesn't pretend to be a free market or to respect property rights. Furthermore, even if it were to fully embrace both tomorrow, blaming the existing situation on the new market system would be about as reasonable as the widespread to credit/blame the president for gasoline prices the day after inauguration.

Go back and read the conversation again. I'll provide a brief, paraphrased recap. Please inform me if any of my paraphrasings are unfair.

Me: How can the free market fix this problem in China without resorting to regulation?
chrylis: They can sue the people causing the pollution.
Me: How can they sue the people polluting the air in China? There are too many of them.
chrylis: Well they can't sue in China because it's not a free market, and even if it became a free market you couldn't blame the free market f

If you're talking about steps to fix this specific situation in China, where there haven't ever been clear property rights and reasonably-fair courts, then you're absolutely right that a free market can't handle the problem, any more than you can let AT&T build a nationwide network on the back of a government-mandated monopoly and then pretend that "deregulation" means a level playing field for competition. I was responding to what I understood to be a question about handling pollution in general; mea

In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court

The victims would have to establish that they have been harmed. And we all know how easy it is to prove that the cancer you got was because of the pollution from a particular factory, and not the other factory down the road owned by someone else, or perhaps something else entirely.

Good luck individually suing a city full of factories because collectively you think they caused your cancer.

So where do the people who suffer from the pollution go to get the necessary expertise to determine who did the polluting and how harmful it is? What function acts as the equalizer between the deep pockets and the turned out pockets?

Such a cute idea, 100,000 of us suing the coal plant upwind from us for the damage to our health from their emissions. Much more efficient for everyone to band together and just bring one suit. Like say we do with government? Yes, government has protected polluters but that's something that can be changed.

No, government needs to do its job -- stopping people from wrecking what they don't own. The confusion is with you, not the libertarian concept.

Ironically, a fine use for democracy is determining how much pollution is fine. Too much, degrades life. Too much regulation, also degrades life by lagging development. During the industrial revolution, lifespans skyrocketted even as London choked with smoke.

Someone demanding a slowdown would have killed more than they would have saved.

No, government needs to do its job -- stopping people from wrecking what they don't own. The confusion is with you, not the libertarian concept.

Ironically, a fine use for democracy is determining how much pollution is fine. Too much, degrades life. Too much regulation, also degrades life by lagging development. During the industrial revolution, lifespans skyrocketted even as London choked with smoke.

Someone demanding a slowdown would have killed more than they would have saved.

If you take the position that people own the air on their property, and have the right to prohibit other people from dumping gases into the open air that get on that property, then anyone owning property has the right to prevent any combustion.

If you say, "the owner failed to secure your property against unwanted gases, their bad," then a corollary is I have the right to release nerve gas on my property next door to the 10 million dollar factory.

So what you're saying is that if there wasn't any government, the small guys would be able to stop the big guys from shitting all over their air, water or land? Because without something like the already pathetic EPA, I just don't see that happening and think you're full of shit. Also, it's one of those things that just can't magically be undone after your little free market experiment falls flat on its face.

Can you not tell the difference between criticism of government protection of polluters and criticism of the existence of government?

The citation you quoted described how, contrary to the usual narrative, the Cuyahoga had been improving for several years before the passage of the Clean Water Act and how efforts by individuals to stop pollution had been preempted by state and federal permitting agencies. The one you didn't quote gave a number of examples of what you "just don't see [...] happening", including the very successful Angler's Co-operative Association, a fishing club in England that had a highly successful record of stopping p

Probably China couldn't be called a free market. However, the traditional free market response to this issue has been upholding the property rights of those who are being polluted via courts or voluntary agreement, making air pollution too expensive compared to the alternatives. No free market advocate believes polluters should not be held accountable for their actions, that's what lawsuits are for.

...that Chinese are just as delicate as Californians. Here in Texas we have oil running through our veins, we breathe ozone recreationally, and we consider lead and mercury "performance enhancing substances". It's just one reason why we can still buy all sorts of products known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, brain injury, and all sorts of ailments that we aren't concerned about much here.

Don't worry once China has to enact those bothersome environmental and safety laws that cut into profits the corporations will move on to the next 3rd world country.

Yes they will - and that's how progress happens! There are a finite number of places that haven't finished their industrial revolution yet, and this just speeds the process along. Eventually, the whole world will have made it to the good side of the industrial revolution, and that's not at all a bad thing.

The way things are going, we'll come full circle and once again N. America will be the place for industry since we won't have any environmental laws left.Here in Canada the Federal government is gutting all the environmental laws as quick as they can and they don't care at all that parts of Alberta are more polluted then China. America has very similar politicians who would love to get rid of all those pesky environmental regulations.

The way things are going, we'll come full circle and once again N. America will be the place for industry

Wake up, dryeo, it's later than you think. Chinese manufactring workers have been heading back to the farms because manufacturing is returning to America - for a decade or so now. Robots work cheaper than Chinese. No ecological catastrophe required.